Tap – Wearable Keyboard & Mouse

Ask yourself this question, how many times in any given day are you tapping on your smartphone screen or pounding away on a keyboard? A lot huh? Well, imagine if there was a company that wants to completely revolutionize the way we communicate and navigate our computers and smartphones. Well now there is, enter – Tap – a wearable gadget that wants to teach you a new, perhaps better way to type out messages and emails without using a qwerty keyboard, better yet, you can even move mouse cursors or navigate apps too!

Sounds too futuristic for you? Well, we don’t blame you. Tap, is a big idea in the tech space. The wearable is connected to your Smartphones, Tablets, PC, Smart TV’s and more via Bluetooth and is comprised of ergonomic and flexible TPU rings that are worn over the fingers and thumb feeding in to an advanced sensing system. Tap, will then create text every time you literally tap one or more of your fingers on a hard surface, think of it like a new invisible keyboard that you train yourself to learn. Each tap or series of taps corresponds to a different alphabetized letter.

Users then download the proprietary TapGenius app, a mnemonic based learning system, with music video and game-based tutorials to teach themselves the taps that correspond to the letters they are trying to access. English letters are grouped into 8 Easy steps and there is even an audible learning system to assist. In fact, once Tap users are familiar with the input protocol, they can even compose text, play games, point, click and scroll using just about any available surface. This is of course helped by the wearable’s impressive 8 hour run time and 7 days standby reassurance.

After using Tap this past month, there are a few things to take away from our experience. Firstly, we love that a company has successfully created a single-handed means by which users can compose messages and emails without the need to have their cellphone or laptop in their hands…literally at all! This feels very sci-fi to us and may very well be a glimpse at a near future in communication technology. We also loved that the case that Tap comes in also charges the device wirelessly, this is a versatile way to keep the device portable and in users’ hands always.

However, despite the company’s claims to be able to type approximately 60 words a minute after 3 weeks, well…we just aren’t there yet. You must remember you are basically training your brain in a whole new way to be able to communicate and while their app is a lot of fun to use, the crutch of the matter is that the speed by which one adopts this new method of communicating and navigating is dependent upon the individual user and their dedication to the product.

Tap, has really impressed us. We were skeptical about its effectiveness but new technology that could have a huge impact on our lives is usually scary at first, but give it some time, you might prefer it. So, we will leave you with this, when Apple launched the original iPhone, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft laughed and said it wouldn’t appeal to users because it didn’t have a keyboard, it was a foreign concept to cellphone users but now they are a billion-dollar company. Perhaps, Tap is on to something here, and we just all need to be brave enough to try it!